This website organizes responses, explanations, and decrees from Notitiae and sometimes from other sources (such as AAS) that are not readily available in other places. The goal is to provide the original text, an English translation, and a PDF scan of the relevant pages from Notitiae or other source. In some ways, the project is a further development of my Cross-Referenced Ordo Missae. This is an ongoing prject which I work on in my spare time. I am also grateful for the help of Rev. Daniel Gill, Mr. Radosław Gosiewski, and Mr. Abram Córdova y Muenzberg in transcribing some of these responses and also to Mr. Johan Oliveire and Miss Crista Mootz for helping to translate certain responses into English. PDFs are available even for texts that have not yet been transcribed.

N.B. In Notitiae 1 (1965) and 2 (1966), this notice appears above the responses: The solution which is proposed takes on no official character. It has only an orientative force; solutions will be published officially, if the case warrants, by the competent Authority in « Acta Apostolicae Sedis ».

We take up in “La Vie du Diocèse”, official periodical of the Diocese of Mont-Laurier in Canada (28 January 1973, pp. 8-9), an article entitled “Women and Liturgy”, wherein the author notably writes:

“Some months ago a document was published in Rome which reformed the ‘ecclesiastical orders’, where it was well established that women could not gain admittance into these orders under any circumstance, not even to those of reader and acolyte. But a remark coming out of Rome consequently made it very clear that if women could not receive these orders, they could however carry out their functions. In that case, ladies and gentlemen, from now on be at peace! You can officially serve Mass.”

Such an opinion calls for the following clarifications:

It is correct that, while allowing the laity to be instituted as readers and acolytes ― ancient minor orders that were reserved to clerics ― the Motu proprio Ministeria quædam of 15 August 1982 explains that the institution of these ministers is reserved to men (n. VII; cf. Notitiæ 9-1973, n. 79, p. 16). We must note that there is no contradiction at all in making a clear distinction between the exercise of a function, fulfilled per modum actus, and the institution of a permanent ministry, the regular exercise whereof implies a particular competence. Finally we must note that, in the case of women designated as extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, their function cannot be considered as similar to the overall ministry that is the service of the altar.